Once seemingly destined for great things, Cold War Kids’ second album, the beautiful but far from instant Loyalty To Loyalty, came and went last year without causing so much as a ripple, more unheard than unloved. Their career on this side of the Atlantic remains scuppered.

Last night, they hardly helped themselves by performing mostly in the near-dark. Idiotically, for Robbers they decided that a couple of weak hand-held torches as sole illumination was the mystique-bolstering way forward. It wasn’t. It looked as if there had been a power cut at a youth club.

This aside, the Californian quartet made a surprisingly sterling case for rehabilitation. Low-key but not mealy-mouthed, they specialise in wayward indie, propelled by Nathan Willett’s brattish vocals and his Chris Martin‑esque keyboards, all underpinned by some surprisingly funky Talking Headsian guitar.

The gap between first and second album material was yawning. On the older songs, especially the percussive, gospel-tinged Saint John, which still sounds ideal for chain gangs to build roads to, the singalong We Used To Vacation and the wonderfully warped Hospital Beds, they were relatively upbeat, refreshingly idiosyncratic and Willett was part shaman, part geek.

On the new fare though (with the startling exception of the clattering, self-lacerating Something Is Not Right With Me) they shrank into themselves, weaved hypnotically through Dreams Old Men Dream and On The Night My Love Broke Through and emerged as another, more cerebral but equally beguiling band entirely. Hopefully, this story has not yet run its course.